else to say it. “
“Yes, Your Highness, you are.” He leaned back, crossed his arms, and gazed impassively up at the deckhead. “What are your orders, Sir?”
Roger had already opened his mouth to protest the next infringement on his prerogatives, and the sudden lack of resistance left him with his mouth hanging wide. He had absolutely no idea what orders he should give, nor did he want to give any. He just wished that people would start treating him like an adult and the commander of the battalion instead of an appendage only important as something to guard. But suddenly the image of a Marine, out of his chameleon suit, exposed to vacuum, sitting on his own vac suited chest, waiting to see if the ship was going to depressurize, flashed across his vision, and he knew he had to find a way out of the corner he’d painted himself into. He thought about the conversation which had been going on around him, to the point of doing a quick check of his toot. The device had been set to a one-minute memory storage, a technique that had stood him in good stead in school and on numerous social occasions, and he felt a surge of relief as he spotted an out.
“Well, Captain, I think we should get started on drafting an operations order while the platoons prep the shuttles. We’ll settle who’s going to be included on the mission in the operations order.” He glanced sideways at Eleanora, but she refused to meet his eye, as did the embarrassed-looking officers across the table. “Do you have anything further, Captain Krasnitsky?”
“No, Your Highness,” Krasnitsky said. “I think that’s it.”
“Very well,” the prince said. “Let’s get to it!”
Krasnitsky looked at Pahner, who nodded, and with that, the meeting adjourned.
CHAPTER SIX
“Prince Roger to the bridge, please. Prince Roger to the bridge.”
The intercom announcement, backed by a ping on his implant, caught Roger at an inopportune time. He was finally being fitted for a suit of armor, and the process was not going well.
The decision had been made, not without some heated discussion, that although Roger would not be permitted to join any assault on the port facilities, he would go down with the second wave of technical support from the ship. It was only half a victory, from his perspective, but at least Pahner had admitted that since there might still be some hostile fire, breaking out a suit of armor and fitting it to the prince was probably a good idea.
Roger suspected that the captain’s rationale was intended as much to get the Marines’ charge out of his hair as anything, but it only made sense to put as much security around the Imperial Person as possible. Unfortunately, the fitting was going to be interrupted, and he felt some trepidation as he looked over at the armorer who was glaring at the intercom with his lips drawn back in a snarl.
Since good armorers were much harder to find than good guards, and since their function was an “out of sight, out of mind” one, armorers assigned to The Empress’ Own went through a far less stringent winnowing process than the guards and faced only one true criterion: extreme competence. And when there weren’t enough volunteers, extremely competent armorers were sometimes “volunteered.” This occasionally led to the assignment of persons who, while more or less suitable to take out in public, were not the sort with whom Roger normally dealt.
“So what do we do now?” the prince asked, staring at a hand frozen in an alloy gauntlet. The gauntlet’s interface was proving cranky, and the armorer had been deeply engrossed in the debugging process when the announcement came in.
“Will, Yer Highness,” said the slight Marine, whose name tag read
It took Roger a moment to translate the sergeant’s thick Pinopan accent. Pinopa was a world of widespread archipelagoes and tropical seas which had been settled in the first wave of slow-boat colonization by refugees from the Dragon Wars in Southeast Asia, and although the planet’s official language was Standard English, the Pinopan had obviously grown up in a non-English household. Despite the accent, Roger was pretty sure he had “pocking” translated correctly. He hoped, however, that the corporal was exaggerating the rest.
“Should I call them and tell them I’m busy?” Roger asked, unsure how they were going to get him out of the ill-fitted armor in any short period of time. Normally, it was a matter of hitting controls which opened the armor along numerous seams, but given the problems this particular suit had been evincing, the experienced armorer had locked down and tagged out most of the controls. The alternative, in which he wasn’t particularly interested, was the possibility of intercepting several hundred amps of current or getting cold-cocked by a flailing fist. Now it would be necessary to reconnect all the contacts before the prince could be extracted.
“New, Yer Highness. I’ll have you out in a pocking minute. Tell them yer gonna be ten mikes, and that’ll cover it. Besides, I got all this udder pocking suits they need pix.” His arms swept around the Armory, where half a dozen suits were up on racks awaiting repair. “Pocking gun-bunnies alles breaking t’eir suits. Pocking passers.”
The armorer crossed the room to a disused tool chest and extracted a one-meter wrench. He dragged the mass of metal back over to the prince, who was immobilized by the armor, and looked the noble right in the eye.
“Now, Yer Highness,” the slight, dark Marine said, grinning nervously, “t’is ain’t gonna hurt a bit.”
He swung the giant wrench back like a batter, and, with a grunt of effort, slammed its head into the left upper biceps of the suit with all his might.
Roger grimaced when he realized what was about to happen, but other than an unpleasant vibration, the only effect on the suit was that the connection from the arm piece to the shoulder popped free. The collapsed molecules of the ChromSten armor barely noticed the impact, but Poertena dropped the ersatz hammer and shook his hands.
“Pocking vibration.”
He looked at the disconnected arm in satisfaction, then picked the wrench up and maneuvered to the other side.
“I used to use a hammer fer t’is.” The right biceps was disconnected with another grunt of effort and another noisy clang. “But my cousin-in-law, he said, ‘Ramon. Gets you a wrench, pudder-mocker.’ So I gets a wrench. An’ tee pudder-mocker was right.” He dropped the wrench and reached up into the gap created by the detached arm piece. “Wonce you get tee arms detached, it all over but tee counting.” He slid his small hand and forearm up along the prince’s back. Roger could feel him fumbling for something, then there was a release of tension as the seam along the rear of the suit’s carapace opened. Unfortunately, the suit bent at the shoulders, and that trapped the armorer’s forearm in the gap. “Pock,” was his only comment. Then—
“Prince, can you sock it op an’ push you shoulders pack?”
With a few more contortions, the prince found himself standing in the middle of scattered bits of powered armor. He looked down at his singlet, and chuckled. “So much for modesty.”
The armory hatch whooshed opened and a female sergeant in chameleon dress stepped in. She had a cool face with high Slavic cheekbones, and her long brown hair was done up in a bun at the back of her head. The rippling distortion of the chameleon fabric denied any impression of shape, but her quick tread and lithe movements indicated a high level of athleticism. She didn’t bat an eye at the half-naked prince or the scattered armor.
“Your Highness, Captain Pahner requests your presence on the bridge.”
“Com the Captain and tell him that it took a bit to get out of the armor,” Roger said testily. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” the sergeant said blandly and tapped the transmitter button on her side as Roger began getting dressed in the clothes he’d chosen for these few, tense hours. He’d considered combat dress, but decided that it was just too uncomfortable and finally chosen a safari outfit made of a brushed cottonlike material. It wouldn’t be appropriate for combat, but it gave a fine aura of adventure and was much more pleasant than the
